JamGlue brings “remixing to the masses”

Built with just $18,000 in seed financing, Jamglue is a new social networking service that allows music lovers to upload songs and then remix them for others to enjoy.

The Seattle startup — created by former Amazon.com engineers Gautam Jayaraman, Matt Rubens and others — opened itself up to the public last week after several months of development at the business incubator Ycombinator.

Is there really a need to create an online music remix service?

Rubens, who left Amazon in May to start Jamglue, said he is not sure how the service will be received. That’s part of the reason why he opened it up for people to tinker with last week. Still, the 25-year-old developer said as more people add music to their MySpace pages or ringtones to their phones, personalization of music is a theme that is not going away.

“We just think the next logical step in personalization in music is being able to easily customize it yourself and make your own remixes,” he said.

There are close to 400 remixes on the site, with most of the music provided by amateur musicians. I listened to several versions of the Jazz classic “Take Five,” including one remix which includes the periodic sounds of an automobile starting up and another that includes quotes from President George W. Bush. On a funk track, you can listen to some of Mike Tyson’s more famous quotes.

Rubens tells me that they plan to make money through targeted advertising and by selling customized ringtones.

“If we get the users and if we get the content, that is really key,” he said. “Once we have that, there are a lot of monetization opportunities.”

In some ways, Jamglue could be compared to iLike.com’s GarageBand.com – the Seattle music service that allows independent bands to promote their music. (iLike just scored $13.3 million from Ticketmaster).

There’s nothing stopping a person from uploading music to Jamglue from mainstream artists, some of whom might not like the idea of their original works remixed by a group of amateurs.

That hasn’t been a big issue to date, with Rubens saying that they tell people not to upload music that doesn’t belong to them. They also will take down tracks if artists say they don’t want the music on the site.

“That is definitely an issue that we are watching closely to see how prevalent it is. We have been talking to lawyers about it and I think that we are on safe legal ground here,” he said. “We are really not trying to be about piracy, we are trying to build tools that people can use…. We really just want to build a community around making your own music.”